Performance Analysis of IEEE 802.15.4

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) consists of a large population of sensor nodes capable of computation, communication and sensing. Limited storage, processing, and transmission power are inherent limitations of WSN. IEEE 802.15.4 is a new standard, uniquely designed for Low Rate Wireless Personal Area Network (LR-WPAN), developed for applications that demand low throughput. Main features of this standard are network flexibility, low cost, very low power consumption and low data rate in an ad-hoc self-organizing network. In this paper, performance analysis of IEEE 802.15.4 is performed using Qualnet 4.5.